Inspection or monitoring of an environment for safety, security and other purposes is known to be important in domestic, commercial and other settings, and has been addressed in a variety of ways.
For example, fixed sensors can be placed within an environment to measure specific stimuli (e.g., temperature). However, many such sensors can only evaluate conditions in the immediate area around the sensor itself. For instance, the temperature twenty feet away from a thermocouple may be quite different from what the sensor is reading.
Fixed cameras are found in many environments and, unlike simpler sensors, they can detect non-proximate conditions. Unfortunately, they often cannot necessarily view the relevant areas in sufficient detail (or at all). For instance, a camera which looks along an aisle in a store does not generally have enough spatial resolution to identify a person's face at the far end of the aisle. Moreover, even if the camera is able to zoom in on this area, when the person is moving away from the camera, their face is likely not visible from this angle.
Human inspectors can move around in the environment and obtain necessary vantage points, for example, by bending over or looking behind objects. However, humans fatigue quickly and cannot maintain a high level of vigilance for extended intervals of time. Also, obtaining additional human inspectors can require a lengthy period of training for each additional inspector. Further, humans are susceptible to collusion and, for one reason or another, may not truthfully report the conditions present in an environment.